Re: Request to publish HTML+RDFa (draft 3) as FPWD

Hi Henri,

(Reducing CC list.)

> Another spec isn't a cowpath. Significant existing usage is.

Yep...I think people knew that.


> Microdata has
> no prior usage. However, HTML+RDFa has very little existing usage in the
> grand scheme of things. Moreover, to the extent syntax that looks like RDFa
> in text/html is used already, it is processed in a way that the draft
> doesn't describe:
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-in-xhtml-tf/2009Sep/0124.html
>
> It seems to me that neither Microdata nor HTML+RDFa paves a cowpath.
> (Specifying Microformats with well-defined authoring conformance criteria
> and processing model would be paving the cowpath.)

Design principles are hardly "principles" if they can be changed on a
whim. What you are now saying is 'pave the cowpaths that lots of cows
in the grand scheme of things have been using'.

But the cowpath metaphor is supposed to invoke the idea of something
that people are already doing. There can be little ambiguity there --
people are either already doing something, or they aren't. You either
have a cowpath or you don't -- not one that suits your goals.

So...

The BBC is publishing RDFa in the form of program reviews.

UK government websites are publishing job vacancies and consultations with RDFa.

Google is recommending the use of RDFa to add license information to
images and videos.

Yahoo! has been processing RDFa with SearchMonkey for well over a year.

Drupal 7 includes RDFa support.

And so on...

Any one of those on their own would count as a cowpath, but putting
them all together, I think we have a bovine motorway.

Regards,

Mark

--
Mark Birbeck, webBackplane

mark.birbeck@webBackplane.com

http://webBackplane.com/mark-birbeck

webBackplane is a trading name of Backplane Ltd. (company number
05972288, registered office: 2nd Floor, 69/85 Tabernacle Street,
London, EC2A 4RR)

Received on Tuesday, 22 September 2009 09:39:04 UTC